Ghetto Processing No More

I did it.  I couldn't take it any more.

I broke down and bought some real software to work with my images.  I had been avoiding it for a very long time.  It was one of things I knew I would do when I absolutely had to, but its an expensive endeavor.

I reached the point I had to.

My previous workflow of Nikon Capture -> ViewNX (white balance, camera mode) [to jpg] -> Gimp ( sharpening, any fixing [ not much ], any cropping ) -> [final jpg] worked fine when my projects required only 10-12 finished images.

However, lately the amount of finished pictures from a project was not stopping at only 10.  I was finishing, in some cases, over 100 images!  My workflow broke down.  ViewNX is slow, and will not show you changes in real time.  Gimp, is also pretty slow, even though I had a lot of items scripted and batch-scripted to work on complete sets of images, it was taking way too much time.

Lightroom fixes that issue.  I still use Nikon Capture to import images off my cards, but then I take them right into Lightroom.  I can do almost everything in Lightroom, very quickly.  For anything I need to do that Lightroom cannot, I now have Photoshop.   I am really surprised at how much nicer Photoshop is to use than Gimp.  I didn't expect that to be the case -- but, wow, it is a lot easier to work with.

I think my original workflow worked pretty well for a long time, but I resisted switching too long.  I burned up hours of my life.

There are a bunch of other benefits to using "industry" standard tools, but for me, the most important one is extra time.

(funny aside... my original intention here was to place a flash and radio trigger under the water and bubbles, but I chickened out.)